Tea party looks to D.C. insiders for help, cash

The tea party may have been built by the grass roots, but in order to survive, it’s going to have to rely on the Beltway political machines and big money groups it once disparaged.

Tea party activists always worked alongside like-minded conservative organizations, but they failed to capitalize on the anti-Obama momentum in 2009 and 2010 to build their own infrastructure and war chests. That means national groups like American Majority, the Club for Growth and the Koch brothers-linked Americans for Prosperity are essentially in the position to determine if GOP incumbents face serious primary challenges.

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DeMint on future of Tea Party

Potential prime tea party targets include GOP senators up for reelection in 2014 — Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Conservative activists would also love to hit back at the 33 Republican senators and 85 representatives who voted last week to raise taxes on the wealthy as part of a deal to avert the fiscal cliff.

The tea party “is in disarray,” said Erick Erickson, the editor of RedState, a blog that helped crystallize the fiscally conservative ethos of the populist movement. Going forward, tea partiers will “either be within the conservative movement as part of that movement or they won’t be effective.”

Polls have shown Americans turning away from the tea party: 24 percent of likely voters considered themselves tea party members in April 2010, according to a Rasmussen survey. Now, only 8 percent say they’re tea party members.

Many activists have moved on, while others have turned their focus to local and state fights, or become absorbed into the Republican Party. Those that remain are as divided as ever about candidates and strategies. And they mostly lack the cash and the organization to mount serious primary challenges on their own.

“There’s not enough money, and I think the movement is a little split right now,” said Billy Simons, a member of the board of the Charleston (S.C.) Tea Party.

“The grass roots are a lot more cynical than they were in 2010,” said Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, a Georgia-based nonprofit that fashioned itself as an umbrella coalition of local tea party groups. “They only want to take actions that are going to have real impact, and not just something that is going to make noise for the sake of making noise.”

Tea party activists may have “missed the moment” to build a more enduring structure that could help boost primary challenges to Republican congressional incumbents deemed insufficiently conservative on fiscal issues, said Ned Ryun, president of the grass-roots organizing outfit American Majority, which trained local activists and offered them grants and assistance in setting up their own groups.

And to jay carney in Virginia up above as we'll as everyone else that hates the tea party. We believe the exact same things you did in 2005 2007 when you were against George W Bush. You haters look like the Taliban that hate everyone that disagrees with the current government. All your missing in the murders, but by the way it looks, your getting there.

Unlike the Tea Party the far-left Progressives that are purging the Democrats of moderates should be sleeping with one eye open politically because now Obama has to fill all those promises he made to the uninformed voters that are still waiting. Americans love voting out liars. What happened to Obama's OCCUPY WALL STREET bowel movement?

"BadBlues light", you are indeed a nutcase, we are like the Taliban?????reckless spending, want government accountability, and demand lower taxes. All the things that dont go together. YES we want government accountability, ok, but your/Bush's Reckless Spending got us here and Lower Taxes kept us here........................ This is the whole prob with you lot, you dont know what you want, what you had proved so bad for the whole country that now the country said NO to you the last 2 times and they will in 2016 as well. Grow a set and get your head out the hole it's in. BUSH, ROBME Mittens, TEATARDLICANS and your band or not so merry men dont make sense and havent for so long that it's just a joke reading ( or skipping most) of your posts...............

Back in 2005, the liberal anti American Taliban were up in arms demanding that George Bush stopped the reckless spending. They would demonstrate with sings of killing the president......saying: "oh no the president is spending our kids' money". Number 2 - I also recall you idiots had no problem with you tax breaks. I grant you that you hated going to Iraq, but you have no problems going to war with "countries that never attacked us", so tell me.....you hate the tea party only because the current president is black and you don't want anyone to demand that the black man stops doing what you demanded the white man to do? I don't blame you for being a democrat ( I was one too before), I blame you for being stupid, racists, bigots, that have lowered the bar for this president only because he is black....and white....which you use to fit our idea.

Proud original Tea Partier here. I couldn't tell you if we are "in disarray" or not, because it's not like we were ever organized to begin with.

Tea Partiers have other things to do with their lives...we work! We're small business people and professionals who DO NOT live a parasitic existence.

Tea Partiers are American patriots who responded to an existential THREAT to our liberty-based way of life: Barack Obama and the radical left. WE may need to get "organized" again if Obama keeps going with his UnConstitutional Executive Orders.

#15 Jingjolly..............Dumb original Tea Partier here. I couldn't tell you if we are "in disarray" or not........... Thats your prob right there, you cant tell anything and you know damb all about Patriotism....

The tea party may have been built by the grass roots, but in order to survive, it’s going to have to rely on the Beltway political machines and big money groups it once disparaged.

REALLY!? are you guys seriously kidding? those same outside groups- AFP, Freedom Works and the like have been behind the tea party ever since glen beck endearingly refered to them as tea babbers and took on their cause in MSM while still at Fox.

what's even funnier is that the tea party & such groups have been behind, or actually lead the charge purging moderate republicans out of washington- those who were willing to compromise and work across aisles to get things done in washington. and now look what's happend... the trea party can get their extremist candidates nominated in statewides & districts but have been getting their clocks cleaned in the general. redistricting can only do so much, republicans are on the path back to minority status with continued talk of taking hostages, the debt ceiling, continued attempts to legislate women's reproductive health care, privatizing SSI & turning medicare into a voucher program, add to that opposition to sensible gun control legislation. these are all issues the public sides with the WH on with survey numbers hitting over 70% support. the tea party has effectively cut its own throat.

You liberal anti American Taliban were up in arms when GW Bush was spending $4 trillion dollars. Now your hypocrisy prevents you from seeing $6 trillion and soon to be $8.4 trillion. Yeah, Bush was reckless, but Obama is finishing off your country. If debt almost destroyed America in 2007, what do you think $8.4 trillion in debt means?

These movement ceased to be the "Tea Party" a long time ago. Now it is just a coalition of affluent extremist political organizations.

I truthfully wish that I could have told the Tea Party back in 09 that it was going to be hijacked by people who cared nothing for term limits, corporate welfare, fiscal responsibility, and a responsible foreign policy.

How terribly ironic that the party of revolt has now become the personification of everything it stood against.